Department of Health and Human Services - Essay Example

Department of Health and Human Services Department of Health and Human Services The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the United States government's primary organization for looking after the health of the American people and offering indispensable human services, for those who are not able to assist themselves. Organizations of HHS carry out social and health research, work to avert disease epidemic, offer health insurance, and give surety of drug and food safety. HHS manages the Drug and Food management, Centers for Disease Control and Institutes of Health (United States, 1980).

The congress controls the operations of HHS by passing new legislation, removing, or adding details to an agency's rules and regulations. Congress can also control an agency through the process of funding and mobilize political pressure and the president's management. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act known as Affordable Care Act was passed by the congress and later signed into law in 2010 (United States, 1980). It consists of mixture of measures to control health care expansion and costs of coverage through private and public insurance.

The congress has ultimate power over the existence of bureaus through legislative provision of resources. It redirects and reverses policies and control bureaucracy through establishing procedures The prerequisite of high quality and inexpensive health care has remained a challenge. The fundamental difficulties of health care systems and services includes interpreting and investigating the use, accessibility, quality, costs, delivery, Health services researchers examine the access to care, health care costs and processes, and the outcomes of health services for populations and individuals.

The department relies on public and the decision makers are mainly vital source of information especially on how sound health care plan in the United States is meeting its challenge. The mandate of HHS is to offer information that will lead to perfection in the health of its citizens. Health care service research involves multi-disciplinary sector of scientific exploration that investigates how organizational structures, financing systems, social factors, personal behaviors and health technologies affects the access to health care, cost and quality of health care, and finally our well being and health (United States, 1980).

Their research areas are families, institutions, organizations, populations, communities, and individuals. Administratively, the state is an assault on legal doctrines of government by assent, power separation, and the rights of those that conservatives and liberals hold precious. The solution to restructuring is that it be found on a proper consideration of these principles, not in the expectation of instant short-term gain. The government has changed from a federal republic to a national executive state that exists outside the structure of the Constitution and exercise unrestricted power.

This executive state has been constructed because of increase of the central government’s authority (United States and National Institutes of Health (U.S.), 1981). This eventually ensures bureaucratic responsiveness and competence: the administrative Platonist, the new public administration, the scientific administrator, representative bureaucracy, participative administration, and public choice. The administrative Platonist position advocates for instilling ethics in civil servants, while the proponents are vague about what values they want to instill, how they will instill them and about why their proposals will not create a cadre of uncontrolled ethical guardians while at the same time ethics are an important element of public agencies and their programs.

The scientific administrator generates competent administrator by recruiting scientist to public service to check other scientist. Competing scientist offer a solution to bureaucratic power only where policy makers can make rational choices among other competing scientists (United States and National Institutes of Health (U.S.), 1981). The pressure groups approach to administrative responsibility requires that representative groups press the demands of the public. Pressure politics does not ensure administrative responsibility because interest groups are not closely linked to their members and because these groups represent only some segments of society while ignoring others.

The representative bureaucracy seeks to control bureaucratic power by recruiting a microcosm of the American population to the civil service. The theory that they would hold the same values as the rest American public so that they pursue their own self interest and further the ends of the American people. In this case, representative theory seems to work in those situations where social origins produce lasting values and the public policy are directly related to such values. This does not occur because of upward the mobility and agency socialization.

The public choice approach offers a unique method of making bureaucracy more responsive and competent, eliminating much of the bureaucracy as possible. By contracting out for services and encouraging co-production, and fostering volunteerism, as well as using vouchers among other market mechanisms. Public choice seeks to use market place incentives to deliver needed government services. Such an approach is highly controversial and lacks consistent empirical support (United States and Dept of Health and Human Services, 1996).

References United States. (1980). Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and related agencies appropriations for fiscal year 1981: Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, second session. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. United States. Dept. of Health and Human Services. (1996). Physical activity and health: A report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, Ga: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

United States & National Institutes of Health (U.S.). (1981). Health research activities of the Department of Health and Human Services: Program planning and proposed initiatives for fiscal year 1981: a report of the HHS Steering Committee for the Development of a Health Research Strategy. Bethesda, Md.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health.